MacIver Institute PI contest

I keep forgetting to mention this, but the MacIver Institute is handing out $500.00 prizes every month for finding government waste or standing up for the free market.

"We want to reward writers, bloggers, and other ordinary citizens who spend their "free" time working to root out government waste or making our government more transparent," said Brett Healy, President of the MacIver Institute. "With the huge tax and spending increases coming at us from every level of government, now is the time for taxpayers to demand that our hard-earned money be spent wisely and efficiently. We need Public Investigators at every Town Hall, every County Courthouse, and especially the State Capitol to watch over our money."

Every month, the MacIver Institute for Public Policy will award $500.00 to the citizen or group who uncovers the biggest example of government waste - or perhaps the most inefficient use of Federal stimulus funds; the blogger who successfully forces our government to be more transparent; or the writer who best advocates for free market solutions to the challenges we face.

A past example of outstanding research by a citizen investigator is Patrick Dorwin, the Badger Blogger (www.badgerblogger.com) who identified over $27,000.00 of taxpayer funds spent by the Milwaukee Public Schools on IPods.

Public Investigators can nominate their own work or that of others. All nominations should be forwarded to maciver@maciverinstitute.com. Entries are due on the last day of each month. The deadline for the inaugural MacIver P.I. contest is Thursday, April 30th.

When the education establishment breaks the law

Jeff Dickert is this week's poster boy for a desperate education establishment afraid that their grip on the state department for public instruction may be slipping away. As WISN's Mark Belling reported first on Friday, Dickert sent out an e-mail invitation to a fundraiser for WEAC-endorsed Tony Evers in violation of the law. Badger Blogger also reported on it on Saturday.

Jeff Dickert is the administrator of the Cooperative Educational Service Agency #7, a state agency that coordinates with the schools of Northeastern Wisconsin. Dickert, in clear violation of the law, has been doing political work on behalf of the teachers union and AFSCME backed candidate, the entrenched Tony Evers. Jeff Dickert has used state resources to not only campaign, but to raise money for Evers, by using his official Wisconsin email account and email list to campaign to public school administrators of Wisconsin and encourages them to pass the message along to their principals and teachers. This is clearly a violation of the law by a public official that is in a position that clearly knows the rules for doing political work with state resources.

Badger Blogger also has posted the e-mail in question. The e-mail had an attached flier created by the Evers campaign. Evers' opponent is Rose Fernandez who ran nearly even with Evers in the primary despite being drastically outspent.

On Vicki McKenna's show today on WISN-AM it was revealed CRG Network is filing a complaint with the state Government Accountability Board. A commenter at Badger Blogger claims Dickert will be on WTAQ-AM with Jerry Bader tomorrow to defend himself.

Something to add to your calendar this morning

Congressman Jim Sensenbrenner and State Representative Bill Kramer will be at the Waukesha Public Library (aka the Taj Ma Larry) for a town hall meeting at 1:00 PM today. The massive explosion in federal and state spending will be the main topic today, although I'm sure both Sensenbrenner and Kramer will have more than a few things to say about Governor Doyle's taking of the money for the Real ID program.

As both the Badger Blogger and Lakeshore Laments reported, the state has been collecting the $10 fee per driver's license to institute the federally mandated Real ID. Now Doyle's raiding the money for the state budget.

Glenn Frankovis at Badger Blogger:

Jim Doyle has decided that he will not budget any money to comply with a federal anti-terrorism law even though the state has been collecting a $10 fee per driver’s license to do so for over one year amounting to about $12.5 million so far. Why? “Doyle said he expects the law to be overhauled now that his fellow Democrats control Congress and the White House”, or to put it in the new motto of the Democrat Party, BECAUSE WE CAN!

From Kevin at Lakeshore Laments:

It’s no secret to any Wisconsin political watcher that Governor Jim Doyle - a wholly owned subsidiary of WEAC - has hated the REAL ID Act from Day One. The only shocker is it’s taken him this long to finally attempt to worm his way out of it.

The fact he’s screwed the lot of us by taking the already paid fee money and is re-routing it for other budgetary purposes shouldn’t shock anyone. After all, this is a man who’s literally rewritten more laws with his powerful line-item veto than anyone in state history.

There’s two ways this will be handled. One will be either the Department of Homeland Security declaring the State of Wisconsin is in non-compliance, calling down the thunder if/when Congress lacks the time to make the changes Doyle believes are coming down the road.

The second is Jim Sensenbrenner raining down fury, because Doyle’s messing with one of his babies.

Best of the Wisconsin Blogs

No, not me. Well, it should be me every week, but Patrick at Badger Blogger got tagged with it this week (he awaits significant financial reward for the honor).

Heating woes
Hang onto your pocketbooks again; along with all of the new taxes, some disguised as fees, Wisconsinites can also count on an average of $200 more in home heating costs this winter. If you use natural gas to heat your homes, expect a 21% spike, and if you use oil, look for about a 26% spike. And if you live in a rural area and use propane to heat your home, look for a 13% spike, to an average of nearly $2,000 this winter.

Now, aren't you glad that the Democrats are preventing us from gaining access to our own natural resources? What's a couple hundred bucks to a Wisconsin family, when it means that a caribou doesn't have to duck under a pipeline or some damn fool thing like that?

Patrick Dorwin
Badger Blogger
badgerblogger.com

What goes through a goose?

Badger Blogger gets the poop on the DNR doing a little goose dropping dumping into a stormwater drain instead of properly disposing of them.

I predict the DNR will give themselves a pass, and then announce a crackdown on private companies that improperly dispose of bird waste.

Because you know if the DNR caught someone else doing this there would be a real s--tstorm.

Goodbye Sitemeter

Microsoft must hate Sitemeter. I got home tonight to discover Internet Explorer 7.0 could not open my blog all the way. After repeating the experiment on a second computer and getting the same results, I then watched to see where IE choked on my site. It kicked up an error right as it was loading Sitemeter. I tried to go to the Sitemeter website and got the same error.

So Sitemeter is gone, along with the TTLB Ecosystem. I wasn't a big fan of it anyway, and it's likely the problems were caused by Sitemeter playing with the cookies.

A quick look at Google points out I'm not alone in this.

Update! A commenter at Little Green Footballs has a solution:

Call the Messiah! he's the one we've been waiting for to fix the internet.

Update 2! Patrick at Badger Blogger has chucked Sitemeter, but Ann Althouse told me she is going to try to tough it out. She wants us to dump IE instead.

Update 3!No Runny Eggs reports, when in doubt - upgrade to the beta IE 8! (IE 1 the browser, IE 2 the browser... IE 8 the browser! You ate the browser? Yuck.)

Legitimate news sites

Tom Haudricourt talked to ESPN radio with Drew Olsen (The "D-List") and "applauded" Milwaukee Brewers General Manager Doug Melvin for not wanting to respond to blogs. (I'd applaud, too, if someone promised me a near monopoly.) Haudricourt then claims Melvin told him that if the local media was going to report what they saw in the blogs, they risked losing their credibility.

Mike Mathias takes a look at Tom Haudricourt's credibility:

Haudricourt is a professional journalist. He should know when he has a source on the record or not—and especially in that situation. The Brewer’s had just signed Gagne to a $10 million contract, and the uproar over the Mitchell report was in full swing. Boras’ unvarnished comments were definitely news, and yet Haudricourt felt his relationship was more important than passing the information along to his readers.

I've already discussed Drew Olsen's little credibility problem, but I was floored when Olsen made this claim, "What has happened is the standard of the Journal Sentinel has changed. It used to be, you gotta have two, maybe three sources. Somebody better be on the record, quoted by name, telling you this before you can run it."

I just got off a flight from Boston and contacted a very reliable club source who told me he knows nothing about any plans to dismiss manager Ned Yost, as posted late last evening by "Badger Blogger," whatever that is. - Tom Haudricourt {emphasis added}

In the radio interview, "My source is more credible."

Do they really want to continue this discussion? Can we talk about the Brewers team that quit on it's manager, something Haudricourt and Olsen didn't report until afterwards? (Yeah, it's pre-internet. The only ones who could've called them on it were the season ticket holders who saw it first-hand and had no blogs then to complain.)

By the way, the Brewers come home May 27th.

Almost timely in a way only blogs can be (in this case, ironically so), Mickey Kaus discusses timeliness, blogging, the mainstream media, and Model 2. For more fun, here's Kaus' original post on Model 2.

Ned Yost, gone?

A source told Bruce at Badger Blogger to expect Ned Yost to be replaced as manager on Monday by Ted Simmons.

Update! Tom Haudricourt pits his anonymous source against the anonymous source at Badger Blogger. Haudricourt's use of an anonymous source makes him more responsible than the Badger Blogger using an anonymous source, because Tom Haudricourt is an accredited journalist. But because Haudricourt is a responsible accredited journalist, he can quote the Badger Blogger without linking to it while making fun of it. Of course, I've offered my opinion of accredited sports journalists before.

Meanwhile, Dan Lamonthe reports on this titanic struggle between blog and newspaper.

-- If BadgerBlogger is wrong, how much does it feed in to the premise that we bloggers are a bunch of gossipy, insufferable fanboys?
-- When should other media outlets -- and mainstream media, in particular -- pick up something like this? Already, the report has spread to Wisconsin sports radio, and it only figures that it'll snowball from there.

-- If the report is not true, does it have any impact on Yost's job security?

The other Journal Communications property, WTMJ-AM, is also following the story. So is the blog Right Field Bleachers.

Shhh, it's a secret IV

I'm beginning to wonder what JB Van Hollen's office is teaching local governments about handling open records requests.

Van Hollen's office is still stonewalling in the Tyler Peterson case.

The state Department of Justice says it needs more time to consider whether it will release autopsy reports on Tyler Peterson and the six people the Forest County sheriff's deputy shot and killed while off-duty back in October.

More than a month after the Journal Sentinel requested full copies of the reports, and six months after the initial media inquiries, the department has yet to conclude whether to make them public under the state Open Records Law.

There is no longer an ongoing criminal investigation in the case because the lone suspect took his life, according to the attorney general's findings.

In a letter responding to a Journal Sentinel request submitted March 4, an attorney in the office said he had not yet balanced the privacy interests of the crime victims and their families vs. the public's right to the information in the pathologists' reports.

Autopsy reports are routinely released in the vast majority of cases.

The autopsy report on Peterson is of particular interest, given the assertions by Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen that the 20-year-old shot himself three times in the head during a confrontation with tactical officers roughly 10 hours after he massacred a group of friends in his former girlfriend's Crandon apartment.

To date, the attorney general has released no medical or pathological reports detailing Peterson's wounds and verifying the conclusion that Peterson took his life after being wounded by a law enforcement sniper.

Patrick at Badger Blogger comments:

These strange actions made many question what was going on, was Van Hollen covering something up, or is he just incompetent? I’m no conspiracy nut, but one has to wonder.

In February, Van Hollen released the final report of the incident, but he refused to release autopsy reports. This once again makes people wonder if there is a cover-up. With the Department of Justice claiming that Peterson shot himself in the head three times, but there being conflicting reports of the number of shots being fired, people want to know if these medical reports support the Justice Departments claim. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, who did an outstanding job covering this story, has been fighting with Van Hollen to get these reports released, but today, they report that he has turned down their request again.

The paper also raises the interesting fact that two of the primary administrators have abruptly left the DOJ’s criminal investigation section, including the highly regarded Jim Warren. it has been wondered for months if these surprise retirements from the DOJ had something to do with the handling of this case. The news report also adds that the report released to the media in February was edited by Deputy Attorney General Ray Taffora, Van Hollen’s top appointed aide.

The issue of DAG Ray Taffora* editing the documents was addressed recently by a Wisconsin State Journal article:

In an e-mail to colleagues, obtained by the State Journal under Wisconsin 's open records law, special assignments bureau director Carolyn Kelly said if the changes suggested by Deputy Attorney General Ray Taffora "are simply wording or spelling, fine. "

But, Kelly wrote, "We need to be very careful to protect our agents so they are free to report investigations without interference and so their reports are accurate and impartial. "

The report summarized evidence collected after off-duty Forest County sheriff 's deputy Tyler Peterson shot and killed six people and wounded another Oct. 7, and the subsequent law enforcement response. Peterson later committed suicide by shooting himself in the head three times.

Department spokesman Kevin St. John said the changes sought by Taffora were minimal -- mainly providing additional detail and clarifying the chronology of events the morning of the shootings -- and were incorporated into the report released Feb. 7.

Department officials, however, are unable to find Taffora 's original recommendations to support that statement and have refused to make him available for an interview.

Weeks after the report was reopened but before it was released, Kelly was suspended. Her lawyer, Dan Bach, has said the suspension was related to e-mails she exchanged with co-workers, including some in which she expressed frustration with how the department was being run under Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen.

It 's not clear whether her Dec. 19 note was among that group of e-mails.

The day before Taffora received a copy of the report to review, Jim Warren, the chief of the Division of Criminal Investigation submitted his resignation.

Later in the same article,

Kust 's report was reopened Dec. 18, records show. That day, Taffora sent an e-mail to Virgil and Warren -- whose resignation wasn 't effective until the following month -- saying he was sending them his "hand-written comments " on the report.

Those notes were not included in the records the department released to the newspaper. The department has been unable to locate them, records custodian Steven Means said.

'Handgun or pistol'

St. John said Taffora 's recommendations were reflected in the final version of Kust 's report, which does not differ substantially from Kust 's earlier version, according to a review of both drafts.

Still, Taffora 's request prompted Kelly to write Warren, Virgil and Kust, arguing only Kust could make changes to the report.

"If it changes meanings or outlooks then (B)rad must agree with the change, " Kelly wrote. "If he doesn 't then it doesn 't go thru. Even spellings and what not must come from him, not be changes we make. "

Virgil replied to Kelly in a later e-mail that day that Taffora had requested a change "to identify the supervisors who contacted DCI requesting assistance " and to clarify that the weapon used in the suicide was a "handgun or pistol. "

Taffora also made recommendations Virgil characterized as "stylistic, " which she said she would recommend not be made.

Other changes made to the report after Taffora looked at it included providing a more detailed timeline of events, St. John said. A street name was also corrected.

It 's unclear if other political appointees recommended changes to Kust 's report.

The newspaper asked St. John for an opportunity to interview Taffora, Virgil and Kust. St. John said the department would not authorize them to answer questions about the Crandon report.

Surely Van Hollen and his team realize that sooner or later they are going to have to release everything, whether because they are legally bound or find themselves required to do so because of public pressure.

On April 7th, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel had more on how the Crandon case continues to eat away at the department of justice:

On Dec. 5, Deputy Attorney General Ray Taffora -- the top political appointee at the agency -- asked Warren for an update on the Oct. 7 shooting in Crandon that drew widespread media attention. Warren responded that day that the lead agent on the case would finish his summary soon and that Forest County District Attorney Leon Stenz had already received the bulk of the investigative reports.

That didn't sit well with Taffora.

On Dec. 6, Taffora responded: "We need whatever has been sent to the DA. I thought it was clear from a previous Administrators meeting that we were to see the report(s) BEFORE they went to the DA. We should see whatever hasn't been sent to the DA as yet BEFORE it goes to him. I want to make sure we know what these reports say so we are in a position to coordinate with the DA any release of documents/public comments that may occur."

Two weeks later, after Taffora received the reports, Taffora forwarded notes and comments to Warren. Warren then alerted Kelly, the supervisor in charge of the Crandon investigation.

Kelly showed skepticism toward the idea of Taffora weighing in on the report, telling another supervisor, Tina Virgil: "Supervisors may not change agents reports, only the agents can. If his suggestions are simply wording or spelling, fine. If it changes meanings or outlooks then (Brad Kust, the lead investigator) must agree with the change. If he doesn't then it doesn't go thru.... We need to be very careful to protect our agents so they are free to report investigations without interference and so their reports are accurate and impartial."

(*In the interest of full disclosure, Ray Taffora was the attorney for the Wisconsin Coalition for Voter Participation. I was the organization's president.)

Resurrecting the family newspaper

Jay Bullock has his undies in a twist because some off-off-off-Broadway play's advertisement had the misfortune of being in poor taste on Good Friday.

The "play" is really a circus geek act where the performers contort their penises for so-called comedic effect. Not exactly Shakespeare and not exactly new. Three-year-old children do the same thing when they "discover" themselves, but grow out of it quickly. I'm just surprised it doesn't have a federal grant covering the show's costs.

On Good Friday, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel ran ad announcing the show's return to Milwaukee, "The Res-erection Tour." The ad had run before without objection but this time the ad's timing rankled.

Mark Belling of WISN, Patrick at Badger Blogger, and a horde of relatively sensible people pointed this out to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. The newspaper, not completely insensitive to their readers, acted accordingly.

And as it turns out, all the bullying from Belling, the religious right, Patrick and others on the blogs must have done a number on that nameless "some vice president of advertising" since the paper caved and pulled the ads.

I don't know why Bullock is so surprised. After all, the play's producer and the owner of the theatre both recognized why the ad was offensive and wrote a letter to the editor of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel to apologize. Bullock has an e-mail from them explaining,

In keeping with the comedic tone of the show, return engagements such as Milwaukee, are being referred to as part of the “Res-erection” tour. It was an unfortunate coincidence that an ad featuring this language ran on Good Friday. Producer David J. Foster and William Stace, owner of the Miramar Theatre sent a letter to the editor of the Journal-Sentinel on March 25th apologizing to those who may have been offended, and explained that the same ad runs year round wherever the show is being presented, and was never intended to make light of the religious holiday.

Whether or not the ad was meant to make light of Easter, I think a reasonable person can infer that the ad was mocking the actual event, The Resurrection of Christ, and regardless if it runs Easter weekend or the Summer Solstice the ad is in poor taste.

I do think the newspaper should have run the letter to the editor, and I can imagine that the newspaper's only reason for not doing so was to spare themselves further embarassment. Hardly sufficient grounds.

The ad is now being run on Jay Bullock's blog, and I'm sure it's being run in the Crazy Shepherd. (Somebody check that for me, will you?) That's fine for Bullock and I hope he charged them full-freight. I'd encourage the show's producer to purchase an ad in every local blog that will accept their advertising.

But there is something to be said for preserving the family newspaper. Just as there are things that I write on the blog (certainly PG-13) that I would never write in my newspaper column (between G and PG), I would hope that the newspaper I read would be of the same sensibility. It's not a matter of dumbing down as it is avoiding gratuitous offense. There are certain ads that are just more appropriate for the back pages of the Crazy Shepherd than they are for the entertainment section of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, and we shouldn't be shocked when the community expects the newspaper to live to a certain standard.

That being said, I think the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel is very hypocritical in this regard. I hope the advertising salesman who had to explain to his superiors why he accepted the theatre's ad quickly opened to the sports page and read aloud the latest lunchtime special for Heartbreakers.

But at least the controversy gives Bullock a chance to shamelessly self-promote himself. He plays a guitar? Who knew? I also loved Bullock's tag for his post, "Legitimate Theatre." Bastard children not allowed entry? All the performers know the actual identities of their fathers?

I'm betting Texas A&M is going to have a rough football season this fall

Owen Robinson is already making out his living will. Rick Esenberg already has dibs on the "Owen Robinson Chair" on Sunday Insight. I get to sit with folkbum on channel 4 on election night looking for bloggers that aren't out at election victory parties. Two years and the boys are still unsuccessful. Patrick at Badger Blogger gets to play "Guess that location" although I'm told he's changing it to different crack houses around Milwaukee.

For a fitting send-off, we're to gather 21 bloggers to each do a one-word post.

Don't believe everything you read

Badger Blogger gives the boys at folkbum a geography lesson:

The claim is, “The company that did Walker’s ads was the same company that did Steve Forbes ads, and they’re based in Chicago.” Well, the fact is, Scott Walker is using a man named Bill Eisner, he is the founder of a company named Nonbox, and he is based right here in Hales Corners Wisconsin. Yes, that IS in Milwaukee County. You can click here and see his address on his website. By the way, they did do the Forbes ads too, so he gets a half point for that.

Apparently Lena Taylor isn’t the only one that is completely and utterly confused, because, although Hales Corners is on the South Side of Milwaukee, it is not in Chicago… However, Lena Taylor’s ad company website clearly shows that they are in fact based in Chicago Ill.

It may explain their continued support for Chicago-style voting.

Well, it's one louder, isn't it? It's not ten.

Blog Net News came out with the list of the most influential blogs in Wisconsin. We can disagree with a ranking here or there, but it's nice to be considered near the top. By the way, I agree with their number one. Patrick at Badger Blogger has certainly built the most influential local blog in Milwaukee. (Likewise Fred Dooley with Real Debate Wisconsin in Racine, whom I am suprised wasn't ranked higher.) Congratulations also to Jessica McBride, 2nd on the list but certainly the number one target of liberal bloggers.


Rank
Blog
1
Badger Blogger
2
McBride's Media Matters
3
Texas Hold 'Em Blogger
4
No Runny Eggs
5
FREEDOM EDEN
6
An Ol' Broad's Ramblings
7
Dad29
8
Boots and Sabers
9
From Where I Sit
10
The American Mind
11
Wigderson Library & Pub
12
The World According to Nick
13
Charlie Sykes
14
The (Somewhat) Daily RAG
15
Paul Soglin: Waxing America
16
Uppity Wisconsin - Making Wisconsin Progressive Again
17
The Right Side of Wisconsin
18
Real Debate Wisconsin
19
Marquette Warrior
20
In Effect

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